The present invention relates in general to opto-electronic scanning techniques for mail, and in particular to a new and useful method and apparatus for automatically adapting mailing formats in different sizes to be scanned opto-electronically, to a given image reproduction format.
A known method for adapting different mailing formats to a given image reproduction format uses the combining of several scanned image points. The disadvantage of such a method is that the lettering or type edges become blurred in the reproduced image, since image resolution is reduced by the merging of several image points. That is, the reproduction image quality decreases. Additionally, an expensive electronic image treatment is necessary for the merging of several image points to a "black" or "white" image point. Furthermore, in this case, very often an incorrectly interpreted image detail may occur, as the merged image point is selected dependent on the occurring number of black and white image points and on the logic "black" or "white" taken as a basis.